Today, by some miracle, was a miracle
Yesterday, as anticipated, a disaster
Tomorrow, anybody’s guess.
(Except that my brain is anticipating disaster so planning accordingly.)
Catastrophic thinking, they call it.
“Don’t worry!” they say.
“It is never as bad as you think!”
“I’m worried!” I say.
“It might be…”
And so I prepare, plan
A
B
C
D
E
F
And so on.
Little me had the energy
The sharp brain
The wiry physique
And an army of internal helpers
To fight against the catastrophe
Plans A to Z.
(Zed when resident here
Zee when resident in Big Bird’s land.)
But older me is getting rather tired
And with the tiredness, so the worry grows
Rather than decreasing
As I’d hoped.
Still never safe enough.
Still never good enough.
Still never me enough.
“What is the catastrophe, exactly?”
You ask.
I ask.
I answer
“An attack.
The sack.
Her lying.
Them dying.”
I could probably make an acrostic
A to Zed
A through Zee
For all the terrors deep in me.
And some have happened
Some have not.
But what….?
What if…..?
If true catastrophe
Might never happen in this life of mine
But happened long before
To those who
Fought
Loved
Tried
The best they could
To plaster over
Heal
Protect me from the terrors
They had known.
The war
The loss
The unimaginable horrors of a time
That no child would or could
Or should live through.
And so my army fights
As if defending
Against the horrors of the life
They’d lived.
The Wind has Blown
And here I am
He lied, she died
And here I am.
The things I’ve tried to fight against
Have happened nonetheless.
So now I try
A different way
To stem the flood
And heal the world.
Through words
And love
That tell a truth
And soothe that babe in song.
And so tomorrow, if it comes
Will be what it will be.
lenabellina 